In today's restaurant industry an inventory of prepared food items is maintained in order to insure a desired quantity is readily available for immediate sale. It is typically the restaurant manager's responsibility to monitor the current inventory of prepared food items and instruct the cook to prepare additional food items to meet future needs. The quantity of food items maintained in inventory and the estimation of the quantity of food items to prepare in advance of the need is accomplished through the manager's knowledge of past sales, waste and outside influences, such as weather conditions. Thus, should the restaurant manager be poor at calculating future needs or become unavailable or otherwise occupied this disruption may cause too much food to be prepared and therefore wasted, or too little food to be prepared and therefore become unavailable to future customers.
Systems have been designed, such as that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,527, which instruct the cook when to commence the items of a selected order so that all the items are completed at approximately the same time. This system however does not maintain a current inventory but is responsive to a select order of a customer. Hence, this system merely times when each item of a group of items should be commenced.
Therefore, a need still remains for a system which can maintain a current inventory of food items without instruction from a manager. Accordingly, it is to the provision of such that the present invention is primarily directed.